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Code To Live: Jay Wren on the Boo Programming Language

As many of you know, I’ve been playing with Dynamic languages with the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime). It’s fun learning about new languages. Furthering that goal, I had the pleasure to sit down with Jay Wren about the Boo Programming Language and interview him for Code to Live. I intended to make it a 8-10 minute interview and cut him off so that I had very little editing to do. 46 minutes later, I cut off the camera. It was a fun interview with lots of code. I found out that the language is a dynamic language but it’s statically types. I thought that was an interesting twist on the language scenario. The syntax is based on C#, Python and even F# pulling a lot of the best practices from each of these languages. The most fascinating part of the language, however, is it’s extreme extensibility. The first example that Jay showed me was how to extend the language itself with With block style syntax ala VB.

I’m a better .NET programmer because of the things that I’ve learned about Ruby, Python and now Boo. I really understand the C# 3.0 features that are coming such extension methods. I understand how LINQ works better as a result of these languages. I’m thrilled!

I challenge each of you to investigate a new language. If nothing else, it will change your perceptions and improve your ability to write code in your primary language.

Check out the show and let me know if Boo is the next language for you to check out…